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An audit of the National Security Agency reveals that it violated privacy regulations about 2,800 times in the past five years. Most of the activity was in the form of illegal surveillance on U.S. citizens and foreign intelligence subjects. "We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," an unidentified senior NSA official said.

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The National Security Agency has released redacted reports that indicate privacy violations from 2001 to 2013. The NSA says the majority of the incidents "involve unintentional technical or human error." The release is a response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A panel of federal judges is pondering the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's metadata collection program. A Justice Department attorney called the metadata surveillance "an important government intelligence program" at an appeals-court hearing this week, and at least one judge expressed skepticism for the argument that the mere collection of data violates Fourth Amendment privacy protections.

The National Security Agency has overstepped its authority on thousands of occasions each year since being granted sweeping new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Most of the illegal activity involved surveillance of Americans, or of foreign nationals on U.S. soil, with some incidents apparently stemming from human error. "We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment ... so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," a senior NSA official told The Washington Post.

The National Security Agency scandal is trickling down to the average Internet user, according to an Annalect survey. The percentage of consumers now worried about online privacy issues rose from 48% in June to 57% in July. The survey suggested the broader implications of such concerns could influence consumer decisions to deny tracking mechanisms.

The White House has declassified part of a court order that allowed National Security Agency surveillance activity, and the Senate Judiciary Committee continues to investigate the NSA's data-collection methods for phone-call data. Parts of the declassified document have been redacted, Josh Gerstein writes, and lawmakers continue to question the value of such spying efforts and whether the activity is infringing on citizen privacy.